From the classroom to philanthropy: Ash Vasudeva on making learning meaningful

We recently connected with the Hewlett Foundation’s new Education Program Director, Ash Vasudeva, to hear about how public education can prepare students for college, career, and civic life; his experience with the foundation as a grantee; what his childhood paper route taught him; and his goals for the program moving forward.

What accomplishment are you most proud of in your career to this point?

I’ve always tried to make learning more engaging and relevant for students. Early in my career as a science teacher at Pasadena High School, I started a school garden. It was a hands-on way to teach biology, particularly concepts like the water and carbon cycles, while giving students the chance to see growth from seeds to fruits and vegetables. The garden became a community building tool that helped me teach science, helped kids learn with one another in new ways, and helped connect parents and other teachers to the work we were doing in the classroom.

Fast forward to my most recent role at ConnectED: the National Center for College and Career. While I won’t take credit for the great work of that center, I loved that they were giving young people opportunities to connect learning to future careers. For example, ConnectED partners with the Porterville Unified School District in California’s Central Valley to support 14 college and career pathways for high school students. The pathways have helped increase academic performance and graduation rates, and are supported by a community coalition of educational, civic, and business leaders. They expose students to traditional industries such as agriculture and health care, as well as newer ones like energy infrastructure and resilience.

Across my career, what’s mattered most to me is helping young people see that learning can be meaningful and connected to their lives.

How have you intersected with Hewlett over the years?

I was a grantee of Hewlett’s at both the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and ConnectED: the National Center for College and Career. I’ve always appreciated that Hewlett supports ambitious ideas grounded in the real world.

At the Carnegie Foundation, we explored how to rethink the Carnegie Unit, the idea that education should be measured in number of hours learning, a concept that has structured education since the early 1900s. Rethinking that framework opens the door to more engaging educational opportunities for young people that build the deeper learning competencies Hewlett has long championed. The knowledge and skills that higher education and employers value — such as communication, collaboration, and critical thinking — can be formed in community-based settings, work-based settings, and school-based settings. Hewlett saw the opportunity and invested in building networks of high schools and school systems to get at that problem.

At the National Center for College and Career, Hewlett’s support for career- and community-connected learning helped deepen students’ engagement by linking what happens in classrooms to what happens in their communities. I’ve seen this in action in places like Porterville and through partners like Generation Citizen, which helps schools provide hands-on civics instruction. In those schools, students and teachers work together to better understand how their communities function and how they can make positive change. When students bring their perspectives to local leaders and work on challenges that are meaningful to them, they develop deeper learning skills through civic engagement.

But my admiration of the foundation’s work started long before I was a grantee. I followed Mike Smith’s early leadership in open education, ensuring that high-quality educational resources were accessible and affordable for all students, particularly as the internet transformed how people learn. Mike worked to ensure that the full power of the internet was available to all, and I think we have a similar opportunity and responsibility as we enter the age of artificial intelligence.

Barabara Chow’s introduction of deeper learning competencies in 2008 gave educators, students, and families a shared language for the skills that support success: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, civic reasoning, problem-solving, and creativity. These deeper learning competencies or “durable skills,” as some people refer to them, are really the skills of human intelligence. In the era of artificial intelligence, we need to nurture the qualities that make us uniquely human so that young people can thrive in their education, work, and civic lives.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Kent McGuire for building on those great traditions. I consider him a mentor, a friend, and a luminary. Kent viewed education through many lenses — as a policymaker, a university dean, a philanthropist, and a nonprofit research leader — and he used that perspective to advance the vision of education as a public good. His belief in public education systems that create opportunity for all students, not just a select few, was one of his great gifts to the field and one that we intend to build on. Kent also elevated the importance of civic engagement and civil dialogue in Hewlett’s portfolio. This work is critical for strengthening connections and cultivating a healthy American democracy at the local, state, and national levels.

What drew you to the Hewlett Foundation?

Hewlett has long played a central role in supporting and guiding public education with its partners, and it’s an honor to join that legacy. What excites me most is the opportunity to help navigate the challenges facing public education today.

There’s a dramatic need to support teachers, students, and families as they adapt to changes in American society that have had adverse effects on student learning. That includes the pandemic, but it’s also much bigger — encompassing the rise of new technologies like artificial intelligence and the challenge of integrating the science of human learning into systems that were built in the early 20^th century. We’re evolving those systems to meet today’s needs, and just as Hewlett has played a large part in the past, I hope, trust, and expect we can work with the larger community to build strong public schools that better serve all students well into the future.

But we know we can’t do it with just our grantee partners alone. By connecting with other funders and aligning with public policy investments at the state level, we can extend our impact. While Hewlett’s resources are significant, they are small compared to overall public education spending. That’s why we focus on high-leverage opportunities and partnerships with nonprofits, state leaders, and other philanthropies to achieve more together than any of us could alone.

Are there ways that you’re thinking about the role of the foundation differently given the current landscape in education?

Education in the United States is ultimately a power given to the states. The federal government plays an important role, especially in civil rights enforcement, special education, and support for low-income students, but most decisions are made closer to home.

For Hewlett and other philanthropies, that creates an opportunity to work in vertical partnership with states. State policy can set the enabling conditions, while forward-thinking districts and nonprofit partners bring innovation and context to build more successful systems of learning.

In this moment, I see a real opportunity to strengthen those connections — from states to communities to schools and families — and to lift up examples of progress that others can learn from.

What are your goals for your first year at the foundation?

In the short term, my focus is on listening. I’m getting to know our team within Education and across the foundation. I’m getting to know our grantees, the work they do, and the values they bring. And I’m getting to know the folks we don’t work with to check our blind spots and get broader perspectives to help shift Hewlett’s strategy to meet today’s needs.

We’re in the midst of refreshing our strategy, which we plan to complete in 2026. Before I joined, the team had already done important work looking back at what’s been accomplished and looking around at what grantees and other partners are doing. That gives us a strong foundation to look forward.

I appreciate the foundation paused the refresh process to allow me time to understand Hewlett’s work and priorities before helping set the course for the future. I hope our grantees will offer the same grace as we listen and learn. We share the same goal: ensuring that Hewlett’s future work meets the evolving needs of students, educators, and communities.

What would people not know about you by just reading your bio?

When I was growing up, I had a paper route from fourth grade to the eighth grade. What that gave to me was a powerful sense of learning that takes place outside of school. The economics of being a paper delivery person: you have to buy papers from the newspaper and then sell them back to your customers. You have to make sure you’re collecting, your books are balanced, but you also have to learn responsibility. People wanted their papers on time. They wanted them in the right place, whether that was in their mailbox or by the front door, and so you adjusted to meet the needs of others.

I think that out-of-school learning helped me in my life. And I think creating more opportunities for students to learn skills that they’ll need in whatever domain they go into — the workplace, the family, the community — complements and reinforces the learning that happens in the classroom. I was a beneficiary of that, and we should help young people get a wide range of experiences and skills that support learning.